Mother
by Lady Luce
Summary: There were reasons the skeletons were in the closet in the first place, they were supposed to stay there; indefinitely. Dante visits Eva's grave after years of trying to forget his past. One-Shot.


**-Mother-**

-Lady Luce-

Dante didn't honestly know why, after all this time, he'd thought that digging up the past was a good idea. There were reasons the skeletons were in the closet in the first place, they were supposed to stay there; indefinitely. It was something he'd felt bad about for years though he had never got up enough courage to act upon impulse like he always did. He'd sat at his desk contemplating it, even thought about going out, doing _something_ just to quell his own curiosity. His mother was dead, he couldn't change the past, he wanted to every day, but even in the realm of demons time travel was impossible.

Since the day he was finally old enough to leave the care of orphanages and foster families – maybe even a little younger than the state had intended because he'd scarpered the moment he knew he could live on the street and survive. That was quite possibly the only part of his life in which Dante had ever constructed a remotely decent plan. And that plan had been quite simply to escape his old life and start a new one, not go back to something which seemed like a distant memory. He'd been forced to accept that his life would never be like it had been again when he realised he could no longer remember his mother's voice.

The problem was that skeletons didn't like to stay cooped up. A year ago when he first learnt that his brother was alive the idea of finding Vergil again consumed him. In fact it was only when he'd begun to think it was once again a dream that Temin-Ni-Gru had sprouted from the ground and then Vergil was gone. Any hope of reuniting his broken family had turned to dust and he realized that he'd been deluding himself.

So maybe now was not actually a time for resurrecting ghosts… maybe it was the time to put them to rest.

He'd finally found Eva's grave, he remembered it from his child-hood; the head-stone was a pale marble flecked with chips of black and green, the writing in chiselled gold read _'loving wife and mother'. _The image had been burned into the back of his retinas as he stared at it because he couldn't let himself look at her coffin, couldn't watch it as it sank into the dark dirt, couldn't watch as she was torn away from him for the final time. His childish mind had been stricken at the idea of leaving her there, alone in the cold earth where the sunlight would never touch her again, make her golden hair shine and her eyes sparkle; where he could never wrap his arms around her neck and fall asleep in her lap.

Despite the memory, the clear image of that cold day where frost lay thick amongst the grass he didn't know where she was buried. Psychologists had decided it was best to take him from the place where the 'incident' had occurred. That trauma and flash-backs would no longer be awakened if he moved away from his old home. So he'd been shoved about this way and that, removed from everything he knew because it was _best _for him. He hated them, they didn't care - they pretended to be altruistic, but he was just another success to tick off on their great list of successes. Another patient to be scrutinized and picked apart when it only made Dante feel like he had a big stamp across his forehead reading _'damaged goods'_.

It had taken ages to find this place again, ages of fruitless searching through the internet and libraries and his own memories. He almost gave up in frustration when Lady found it for him. She had her own life to get on with, but she'd stuck around and helped him out. Maybe because she'd lost her purpose in life that night too.

She was even standing at the gate now as he made his way down the path on a grey March morning with the frost cracking under his feet. The air was cold and fresh with the scent of spring trying to make its way through the edges of winter. Trees were growing new shoots, young leaves sprouting, throwing a splash of colour across the dreary scene. His own attire fitted in perfectly, because for once he wasn't wearing bright red, just black and white, save for the rose clasped between his finger tips, because she loved roses. In the spring they'd sit in a vase on the table and the whole house would smell of them.

His feet knew the way to go and he let them lead him across the grave-yard until they stopped in front of that white marble head-stone with the golden inscription. He knelt down, let his messy white bangs hang in his face because for some reason it felt as though she was watching him and he wanted to hide his eyes like he always did when he was showing true emotion.

And in that instant he remembered her voice. It was light with laughter reprimanding and teasing as she brushed his hair back _'I hate it when you have it like this, I can't see your eyes.' _Another smile as he looks up at her, this time it's wistful. _'You have his eyes.'_

Dante barely noticed as he brushed his hair back, let the smile slide across his face as a strange mixture of happiness and grief stuck in the back of his throat. He read the inscription again, reached a hand to touch the cold marble and scrubbed it clean of dirt and age with his sleeve. The rose rested against the curve of cool marble.

"Happy mother's day."

* * *

_A/N: Random fluffy/bittersweet one-shot which just hit me, possibly because this year mother's day seems so much more poignant to me. (Also another excuse to write angst). And I like to play fill in the gaps with DMC XD_

_-Lady Luce_


End file.
